Your To-Do List:

Your Star Rating:

Your Difficulty Rating:

Your Ticks:

Climbers Partner with LDS Church on Stewardship of Little Cottonwood Canyon Climbing

June 1st, 2017:The Salt Lake Climbers Alliance (SLCA), the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), and Access Fund announce the signing of an unprecedented lease for 140 acres in Little Cottonwood Canyon (LCC). The parcel, known as the Gate Buttress, is about one mile up LCC canyon and has been popular with generations of climbers because of its world-class granite.

The agreement secures legitimate access to approximately 588 routes and 138 boulder problems at the Gate Buttress for rock climbers, who will be active stewards of the property. The recreational lease is the result of several years of negotiations between LDS Church leaders and the local climbing community.

Access Note: The climbs on the Church Buttress above the vault that have been traditionally closed will remain closed. Please help us steward this area and leave no trace.

Description

Tingey's Torture has some more pitches to do after climbing Tarzan and Tingey's Terror. I did some interesting variations (by accident), but I will describe what the real route is!

P1 & P2) Climb Tarzan or Sweet Jane.

P3 - P6) Climb Tingey's Terror.

P7) From the trees, continue up the crack system to a V formed by to wide cracks. Some fixed pro climbs up the face to the right of the two cracks. Take your pick of a few good ledges for a gear anchor.

P8) Several options. Most straight forward is a 5.6 slot straight up, stopping at a big ledge (gear anchor). Or try a 5.10 bolted variation to the right.

P9) From the ledge, do a small runout to the first of 3 bolts. This face is 5.8, and then has a long easy runout to a 2 bolt anchor.

P10) Traverse left from the bolts, then ramble up easy slabs to a right facing corner. Follow this fun easy corner until a bolt on the left face. Climb the slab up clipping a second bolt, then easily up and over to a set of chain anchors.

Descent) Long tedius scramble west down to the Schoolroom rappel, then a one-rope rap. Another option that I haven't tried is to do some 2-rope raps and downclimbing down and right of the climb.

22 Comments

Awesome climb. While belaying on the second to last set of chains my Petzl chalk bag fell onto the slab below. If you go up there and find said bag I will trade you a road soda for it. Thank you!
Apr 17, 2017

Great linkup. We decided to give the right chimney a go (the right off-width of the "V"). To tell you the truth, it was actually kind of awesome. You can face outward and jam with your right while working the face holds with your left. Very reminiscent of Crescent Crack style but maybe a little harder. I was glad to have a #4. The East Rappels are great and you get to TR the Flakes, a really amazing 10b. Highly recommended. Scramble down from the East Gate area.
Apr 20, 2012

A great alternative to doing Tingey's Terror prior to Tingey's Torture, is to do Elementary My Dear Watson.

I'm not sure why someone would want to lug a 70m rope up there. The route goes just fine with a single 50m and the walk-off to the schoolroom rappel. Either your partners take forever setting belays or you have some S&M thing with rope drag....

Also, don't miss the 5.10 variation on the 2nd pitch of Torture. Tough couple of moves but with a bolt at your waist, very fun. I almost fall off it every time.
Oct 19, 2010

Plain and simple... Little Cottonwood was great, very happy for those involved in helping equip the rap route off of the Tingy link up. I believe it took maybe 20 minutes to get down simul rapping, maybe... Man! the things people want to complain about???
Sep 6, 2010

from tarzan to the top of torture to axis of evil we managed 6 pitches w/ a 70 meter rope.

1. tarzan to the trees under tingey's direct 2. tingey's direct to terror belay at fudd ledge 3. rt side .6 crack variation to the bolt pin anchor below the start of torture 4. 1st pitch of torture to the belay just below the .8 bolted part 5. .8 bolted rounded arete to the .7 slab above 6. scamble up 150' to axis of evil

most of these pitches are almost a full 70 meters with pitch 4 being the longest, but even with such long pitches there was still adequate protection with a single rack to #4. considering there are so many bolts on this climb i could see one carrying only up to a #2 camalot. this link up is by far the fastest most efficient way to climb the route with 2 people.

p.s. - axis of evil is a great way to end the climb. dont skip it!
Apr 17, 2010

Sweet Janes, Tingey's Terror and Tingey's Torture are doable in 7 pitches with no simulclimbing on a 60m rope. We simulclimbed for about 20 feet at one point, but it wasn't really necessary.

This climb is one of those, common in LCC, where you can stop lots of places and I never seem to climb the "correct" number of pitches.

We did Sweet Jane's variation in one pitch, and then the second pitch was to a set of chain anchors below/on the slab that is the "terror" pitch.

P3= Slab pitch with bolts to Fudd Ledge P4= Either left or right hand version, to a belay in the trees. If I had gone a bit further up into the trees, no simulclimbing would have been necessary on the next pitch. It's pretty brushy though.

P5= LONG pitch from the tree belay up easy slabs and then a nice crack to a belay at a huge tree. From here it looks like 3rd class for a bit, but you might as well just do the next pitch roped. P6= Go up slabs, past some overlaps, then trend right to a 2 bolt anchor. P7= Climb straight up from the anchor, aiming for a 2 bolt line on a face. Clip the bolts, and top out 5-10 feet later.

I'm pretty sure we didn't make any substantive changes to the route or variations, and it was easy to do in 7 pitches--we weren't really trying to stretch out pitches, it's just habit maybe. No rope drag issues even. We did seem to avoid the 3 bolt line mentioned in P9 in the description, but we did P10 as described.

The descent also did not seem that bad to me, but we had a party in front of us mostly finding the way.
Mar 23, 2009

Bobby Hanson's beta for the linkup is perfect, makes for fun long pitches and a perfect warm-up/approach to the flakes. Replace the 5.8R second pitch with Tingey's Direct and use James Garret's bolted variation on the pitch above Fudd Ledge to avoid bushwacking. Linking the 10a variation with the arete above makes for an amazing steep crystal pinching to slab pitch.
Nov 3, 2008

James, I may be wrong, but I think that Tea was referring to a bolt on the finish of Tingey's Terror, not ...Torture.

I actually like the walk-off, and have still not used the rappels. That said, I've never thought about it too much, but I don't find the rappels "offensive." I simply find the walk-off to be pleasant. I once passed a whole herd of goats up there on the walk-off. They were much less skittish than I expected (this was my first, but not lone close encounter with the Wasatch mountain goats).
Dec 16, 2006

Well, I am the one "guilty" or at least responsible for the minor variation to Tingey's Torture. I certainly like it the the way it was originally put up by the Smoot and company party, but I confess I placed the Bonier Hangers and Fixe Ring bolt at the belays and did the short little direct bolt protected variation to the scramble in the trees. I had done it that way before without bolts and decided it was definitely worthy enough to warrant them. I also, around that time, established the East rappels (just one 60m rope necessary) which seemed so much easier and nicer than walking off to the west. My apologies to anyone who is offended by these variations. This is one of my favorite climbs. I did not add any bolts to Tingey's Terror nor to any other parts of the Torture, though I did fix up the belay at Fudd's Ledge....though I believe it has been redone yet again since then (late 2002?).
Dec 16, 2006

>I think I know what threw you off. The blue line in the photo is the exit pitch for Tingy's Terror. It's wide and its crap.

Nah, don't think so. Can be the last pitch of Tingy's Terror, but, either way its a great pitch. Really fun 5.6 and fully R rated (at least). I thought the bail off pitch on Tingeys was either straight left of the trees, following the low angle ramp to the West, or, the crack that angles up at 45 degrees left from the trees, and not the left crack option at your V shaped wedge (also, see the "red route" marked on the Tingey's Terror description, that's the one). Both of those cracks can end up at the big pine tree with the rap slings on it.

>Belay at the base of that big V shaped wedge (gear anchor)of rock for the first pitch and follow the red line.

First pitch "should" come off the bolted belay anchor at the area I've indicated above. That matches the topo in the Ruckman book. You go right, stepping into a very short right facing corner, up to a horizontal crack (eats a #1 camalot perfectly), then stand up on a couple of low, bumpy chickenheads and clip a bolt. Hard move up, slightly to the right, then clip bolt #2. Up slightly left, then grab a money chickenhead and finish the pitch to the bolted belay (bolt and pin) below the big V-shaped wedge. From there, either up the wide to the left (the 5.6 option we took), straight up the wide crack (5.6 also, according to the route topo), or the 5.10b friction variation to the right of the wide 5.6 chimney wide crack.

>From the top of that short pitch you walk down a sloping ramp until it looks like you're going to pitch off the side of cliff. Set up a gear anchor here which is the base of the 5.8 crux slab pitch (marked correctly in the photo) to a set of bolts that are pretty obvious.

Aha, way off to the right. That makes sense. I walked on a ramp over there, but, didn't go way around to the east. Only place those next two bolted pitches could have been, methinks.

We started the first pitch of Tingey's Torture from the two bolt belay (Bonair hangers) located to the right of the right hand 5.6 variation of Tingey's Terror up the low angle wide crack from Fudd Ledge. Past the first bolt, I thought, especially if you are short, this move was a bit harder than 5.7. Anchor at the end of the first pitch is a Fixe Wilderness Ring and a wafer piton with ring, both seem kinda too high for a comfy belay spot. Might be best to move up into the trees at the base of the wall?

On pitch 2, we took the cool 5.6 variation to the left, but, even with big cams, this looks pretty unprotectable. Fully R rated, but, really fun climbing. Went through the trees above that crack, and traversed back and forth to find the bolted 5.8 pitch per the Ruckman book topo, but, no slab pitch was seen, so, up and left then off the route. I'm guessin' we should have climbed another pitch on the climber's right?

This route would benefit from an accurate topo!

I thought the hike off over to the Schoolroom rappel was suprisingly fast and easy.
Oct 23, 2006

Just a little history about this route. It was mapped out by Brian Smoot about 2 years before we first climbed it. The day we choose to first ascend this route was a bitter cold snowy morning Thanksgiving Day. The route took all day to put up. If you climb all 10 pitches it is one of the longest enjoyable routes in the canyon.
Jun 2, 2006

I noticed that big shiny bolt last year. It seemed out of place, as there was gear to be had. I figured someone had a drill and an extra bolt they didn't want to bring home so they just set it. No other logical reason.
Mar 23, 2006

Has anyone else noticed the new bolt, on what is the last picth of Tingey's Terror? From the belay at the start of the torture variation...the old last pitch went up and left to a 5.6 crack to a big ass tree and an unroping spot. There is a brand new bolt 6 inches from a text book nut placement?!?! What gives? When was this added this and why?A disgrace....
Mar 23, 2006

My girlfriend and I did sweet janes to tingeys torture in 4 pitches with a small amount of simu-climbing on p-1 and p-3 w/70 meters of rope. 3hrs truck to truck. This was our 1st time up the route. I thought the walk off was not to bad to discern. Fun route for cruisin in the hills. At the top behind the small cleft in between the little bolted summit pitch and the main buttress is a real nice wind protected spot where the goats like to chill. Good view of the black peeler slabs. We did the 2 schoolroom raps 1-pine tree 2-chains.
Oct 3, 2005

Including Tarzan, and Tingey's Terror, this can be done in six pitches:

(1) Tarzan. Pass the chains for Tarzan and continue into the trees on the right.

(2) Up the black streak (5.8 R) and the beautiful 5.7 slab to Fudd Ledge. This pitch may cause difficulty communicating, and/or rope drag. Beware that there is no bolt in the black streak as indicated in the Ruckman guide. I don't believe there ever was such a bolt. All in all, this is the best pitch of the route, IMO.

(3) The rightmost variation (5.6) is the most aesthetic, and has great exposure. The 5.7 variation to the left is great climbing, but then sort of dead-ends at the top. Take any of these up past the trees in the gully to the bushy, blocky ledge just below the "V".

(4) Great 5.7 face past the bolts. Continue up the easy slabs to the horizontal crack just below the 5.10a face variation.

(5) The 5.10a face is an excellent variation to this climb. Or take the wide 5.6 crack. Either way, link this with the 5.8 bolted arete.

(6) The final 5.7 pitch.

Since you are there, scramble up and west about 150' to the Axis of Evil Arete. This is a great bonus pitch. From here, the scramble down to the Schoolroom rappel is not too bad. A little bit of bushwhacking right at the beginning leads to easy slabs and gullies. The descent will probably take about an hour to the car. (I've done it in 45 minutes, and I'm not particularly fast). I haven't done the rappels, but I doubt that I could do five single-rope rappels in under 30 minutes.

On the 3rd to last pitch, we climbed further left up some broken and easy rock to a short but nice laybacking crack, that enter the top dome just left and up the groove form the base of the 5.8 bolted blunt arete.
Mar 14, 2005

On our pitch 1 variation, I would rate it 5.9, but if it cleaned up it may only be a 5.8. The Pitch 2 leftmost chimney, I would say 5.8, but again, that might have been cause my backpack kept interfering.If anyone else has done these variations please express your opinion.
Apr 26, 2004